The year 2006 has been designated by the World Health Organisation as the Human Resource Year for Health, and by the United Nations as the Year of Migration. The World Health Organisation reports that of the 175 million
people (2.9% of the world's population) living outside their
country of birth in 2000, 65 million were economically active.
The rise in the number of people migrating is significant
for many developing countries because they are losing their
better-educated nationals to richer countries. Medical practitioners
and nurses represent a small proportion of the highly skilled
workers who migrate, but the loss for developing countries
of human resources in the health sector may mean that the
capacity of the health system to deliver health care equitably
is significantly compromised. It is unlikely that migration
will stop given the advances in global communications and
the development of global labour markets in some fields, which
now include nursing.

The global shortage of healthcare professionals and the loss
of skills by Africa have resulted in a situation where Africa
is not able to address its healthcare needs. At the same time
Africa is experiencing in some countries an explosive number
of patients with HIV, more deaths from malaria, tuberculosis
and in some cases many deaths or morbidity that can and should
have been prevented if adequate skills and resources such
as medication were available.

"Africa faces a huge burden of potentially preventable
and treatable disease that not only causes unnecessary deaths
and untold suffering; it continues to block economic development
and damages the continent's social fabric" New
Partnership for Africa's Development Health Strategy.

The Commission for Africa reports called for an extra one
million health workers to be trained in Africa by 2015. The
commission wants the world's richest nations to provide $7
billion to develop Africa's health infrastructure.

With so much of its healthcare resources based outside Africa,
mobilising the resources in the Diaspora in a constructive
and structured manner will result in innovative and practical
solutions that will be of added value to Africa's Healthcare
enabling Africa to address its capacity to meet the related
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The NEPAD health
strategy emphasises the need to reduce the brain drain of
essential human resources for health development. NEPAD strategic
vision for health development can only be achieved through
increased resource mobilisation, strengthened management and
more equitable distribution and allocation of financial and
human resources.

"Successful implementation of the NEPAD health strategy
is contingent upon the achievement of innovative and effective
partnerships between African governments and health development
partners, based on the principle of African ownership, and
underpinned by active collaboration and coordination at the
global, regional and national levels" New Partnership
for Africa's Development.